Call for Bachelor or Master Thesis

How culture-specific is teacher self-efficacy?

Meta-analyses and systematic reviews have been considered the gold standard in medicine for years and are becoming increasingly popular because of a high level of evidence in education research as well. Meta-analyses and systematic reviews systematically summarize existing primary studies. Assessing the quality of individual primary studies is a significant component of conducting meta-analyses and systematic reviews.

Teacher self-efficacy is one of the current trending topics in educational research. In this context, many studies investigate how teachers' self-efficacy is related to characteristics such as emotional exhaustion.

But can we really determine relationships so easily? For years researchers have repeatedly pointed out problems with measuring teacher self-efficacy with common questionnaires. For example, it is unclear whether teacher self-efficacy can be measured across countries using the same questionnaires. It is conceivable that teachers' self-efficacy is influenced by the respective teacher training, the respective daily school routine, but also general cultural dimensions such as a more collectivistic or a more individualistic orientation.

In this thesis you address this issue: First, you develop a schema that systematizes possible differences in teacher education/daily school life in different countries. You will then focus on evaluating existing data. In this way, you will examine how valid self-efficacy questionnaires are across different countries and be able to analyze possible differences using your developed schema.

This work will allow you to take an in-depth look at the two topics of cultural specificity of teachers' daily lives/teacher education and teacher self-efficacy, as well as evaluate existing data. In doing so, you will make a direct contribution to the research of the Professorship for Research on Learning and Instruction at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology.

Interested?
Then we look forward to hearing from you via e-mail at:
janina.taeschner@tum.de

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